2020 Priorities

Thank you so much for your support of PJALS. Your dedicated and generous support over years is the reason we are celebrating 45 years this fall.

The PJALS Steering Committee set our 2020 priorities at a retreat with staff in February. Together, staff and Steering Committee discussed the Member Priority Survey Results, the paradoxes of our work, and our vision for racial equity for PJALS. We shared this at the Special Membership Meeting on April 15, and now we’re excited to share it here.

We are committed to using a racial equity lens in every area of our organization, as we engage everyday people to build a just and nonviolent world.

In 2020 our organizing priorities are:

Smart Justice Spokane: No new jail, end mass incarceration and racial disparities in our regional criminal justice system, including law enforcement accountability

Rights of immigrants, refugees, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, and people of color to build collective power with targeted communities

Countering white nationalist escalation and white supremacy

In 2020 we seek to hold these “Wicked Questions.” We will use these questions to tend to both parts of the paradoxes they name, and we’ll move iteratively toward answers through our practice together:

How is it that we are answering the call and desire for more visibility in the community and at the same time we are behaving as an accountable partner not taking too much space or too much credit, simultaneously?

How is it that we are growing in membership, staff, and budget and at the same time we are continuing to be a relationship-based organization, simultaneously?

How is it that we are welcoming to people new to social justice work and at the same time we are radical, simultaneously?

How is it that we are having clear priorities and at the same time we are able to respond to salient issues, simultaneously?

How is it that we are doing too much and at the same time we are not doing enough, simultaneously?